


carpe noctem

by shatterthelight



Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: 5 Sentence Fiction, F/F, Ficlet Collection, One Word Prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-08 21:26:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 3,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12262401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shatterthelight/pseuds/shatterthelight
Summary: "Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night."





	1. summer

**Author's Note:**

> Since _apparently_ I haven't already committed myself to enough things, and because I've been wanting to challenge myself to something like this, every day in October I aim to write a one word prompt + five sentence ficlet for the hell pairing. I only just decided to do this, so the first two are backdated for consistency's sake, but from here on out they're going to be daily!

Luisa is a bird born of summer.

She thrives in bright sunshine, in the embrace of a warmth that matches her heart, and she hates the cold like the stars hate the daylight.

Rose's hands are as freezing as a warning bell; Luisa laces their fingers together and leans in until their breathing intermingles, and she sucks the frigid air into her lungs and holds it there until she shudders.

She never loved the cold until it was the only person calling her name, never saw the allure of snow until she caught the icy flake of Rose's kiss on her tongue and found it to taste a little like blood and a lot like hope.

Luisa is a bird born of summer, but she falls into winter's arms, and she shakes and shivers and does not fly away.


	2. necklace

A hand tightens around Rose's throat and thrusts her to the bed, and Luisa, who has always been a force too large for her own body, pins her down with nail-bitten fingers and the weight of desperation.

Rose has never been a woman on her back until Luisa put her there, and when Luisa yanks the ties around her wrists and knots her to the bed-frame, Rose has to close her eyes and inhale through gritted teeth and accept the fact that she does not hate this.

Pressing fevered kisses to Rose's collarbone, Luisa works her way up, gently nipping as she goes along, and her lips quiver against the sensitive skin of Rose's neck.

Rose wonders if the reason Luisa likes to grasp for Rose's throat is because she knows she's the one really being strangled.

And Rose never meant steal this girl's breath, but they wear each other's hands like necklaces, and so they lay there together, tangled in the darkness, fingers searching for the divinity in destroying themselves.


	3. invite

Rose whispers, "Come over," and Luisa has a wise mind and a strong will, but that whisper crawls up her spine; her insides turn and twist with a longing that make her resolve to go as weak as her knees. 

"I don't belong to you," she says, but she gives all her pieces over in spite of it, all the wretched, broken parts of her that Rose finds beauty in anyway.

"I know," Rose says, breath hot in her ear, and it sounds nearly like an apology, "but please," that word has always been Rose's sharpest weapon, "come over."

Rose beckons, and the invitation to spend a few hours pretending to be loved and in love, to settle into a woman who effortlessly lines up with her jagged edges, pulls Luisa in by the skin of her teeth.

Rose beckons, and Luisa follows her into the fire.


	4. button

Rose lives safely within walls of her own making – until loving Luisa cracks the concrete.

A maddeningly observant creature, Luisa is; Rose strives to hide the truth of herself away from those keen eyes, but her efforts only serve to make Luisa all the more determined to catch what little light slips through.

Rose wears composure like a second skin, and Luisa learns, all too quickly, how to tear it right open and reach straight into the heart of her.

She's always wrapped gauze around the mangled wounds of her emotions, letting them fester until they pull her into a fever dream of unbroken control, and it isn't until Luisa that the fever breaks and she remembers how it feels to be awake.

And so with deft fingers and an unflinching resolve, Luisa presses all of Rose's buttons – ones she's spent a lifetime concealing, ones she never knew of herself – and Rose opens her eyes.


	5. candle

The room is low-lit with the flame of a single candle, nestled right within its holder where it belongs.

It's just enough light that the reflection of it dances in Rose's blue eyes, fire bouncing off the glass of ice.

"Your eyes are beautiful," Luisa tells her – not for the first time, but something about the atmosphere of this moment feels heart-pounding and new, so she says it again: "Your eyes are so beautiful."

"They're nothing compared to yours," Rose murmurs back, speaking with conviction; her hand rests against the contours of Luisa's waist, and she pulls Luisa in closer until their eyes are only inches away, saying, as she does, "Mine are nothing special."

But she's wrong, because those eyes hold all of the words Rose will never say; every flicker, every blinked back tear, every downcast expression is a lifeline, and Luisa stares into them now and thinks to herself, _They're what I have of you._


	6. reach

Sometimes, even in a room with other people, Rose still reaches for her.

This reckless passion between them exists behind closed doors, beneath rumpled sheets, locked away from the rest of the world, and Rose is not fool enough to think they could ever belong to a love on full display.

But there are times like now, at dinner with the rest of the family, where the two of them sit a little too close anyway, and that magnetic force pulls their hidden hearts together.

Luisa is a sunny, cheerful girl with a joyous laugh and the saddest eyes Rose has ever known, and she carries a loneliness about her that Rose cannot help but see.

So Rose reaches for her, and they join hands under the table, a mutual act of silent defiance of the story they've written for themselves.


	7. circle

Luisa's thumb traces languid circles on Rose's forearm, her touch an unspoken plea for Rose to lay here a little longer before slipping out of her embrace.

The light of early morning streams into the room through the translucent fabric of the curtains, and this is when Rose is supposed to slip out of bed, pull her clothes on, and slink out the door to step back into reality.

But with Rose's head warm against her chest, Luisa is content enough that she allows herself a few more moments to trick herself into thinking this all belongs to her.

Whether Rose does not sense the danger of this or whether she's too tired to care, she doesn't move except to curl a little closer, and perhaps she's tricking herself too.

So Luisa keeps tracing circles, finding constellations in the pattern of Rose's freckles and telling herself she owns the sky.


	8. draw

It's a late Tuesday evening in the middle of September when Rose, watching Luisa doze away on the couch, starts drawing again.

Drawing is a luxury that she has not allowed herself since stepping into this new skin, but the lines between herself and Rose Solano are blurring more and more with each passing day, and so, as Luisa shifts in her sleep, Rose reaches for a pencil.

Luisa is a work of art in and of herself, face peaceful, dark hair spilling over the cushions; the scene is a masterpiece begging to be captured, and Rose, holding her breath, begins to sketch.

She finds, almost immediately, that she is still incredibly adept at this (a discovery that frightens her, for perhaps she is not as good at tearing out all the excess, unneeded parts of herself as she's always thought) and right before her eyes, a blank page transforms into the image of a beautiful woman, dreaming away in a world softer than this one.

Rose has always left a trail of destruction in her wake, and she has never once looked back long enough to regret it – but right here, right now, she remembers how it feels to create.


	9. poison

Luisa is not addicted to alcohol.

She is an addict, that much is certain; it runs so deep in her veins that she could slice every old wound of hers back open, bleed and bleed and bleed, and still find obsession buried in the marrow of her bones.

But it is not until she kisses Rose, finds that her lips burn the same way booze does when it slides down her throat, that Luisa comes to understand the truth of the craving.

Rose is intoxicating, every inch of her, and Luisa drinks her in like honey and wine; with every kiss, she falls farther and farther into her own wreckage, and she knows this, feels this, and cannot bring herself to stop.

Luisa is addicted to self-destruction, and Rose is the sweetest poison she's ever tasted.


	10. chain

On the days she's a little less apt to hate herself, it's easier to blame the ring.

The silver band is a shackle, worn tight around her finger, and the enormous diamond has a fondness for catching the light and winking at her in taunt, as if to say _I'm the one thing standing between you two._

The ugly truth of the matter: Rose could slip the ring right off and throw it out of sight, and absolutely nothing would change.

Rose is bound by the chains of every heart she's stepped on, every life she's stolen, every reprehensible person she's been and can never fully leave behind; she crossed all the points of no return long before her marriage, and if she lets herself dwell on this – on all the reasons she will never deserve the only girl she's ever loved – it will tear her to shreds.

So she blames the ring.


	11. panic

They always feel like drowning.

The tidal wave of panic crashes down on her, fills her lungs with icy water until she's left searching for air that she can't find, and she coughs and sputters and flails helplessly for a hand in this cold, lonely ocean – and somewhere, somehow, she finds one.

"You're safe," Rose soothes, intertwining her fingers with Luisa's, "just try to breathe."

She can't, she can't, she can't, but Rose strokes her hair and keeps murmuring soft reassurances, until at last, Luisa manages to break her head above the surface and gasp.

She blinks the saltwater from her eyes, and her blurry vision clears; Rose's hand gently squeezes hers, and Luisa cannot stop herself from saying, voice hushed in timorous wonder, "You're here."


	12. pattern

"I think you're a little too in love with yourself," Luisa murmurs, fumbling for the zipper of Rose's dress, "because this is the third time this week you've worn your own damn name."

She pulls the zipper downwards, fingers tracing along Rose's spine and leaving a trail of heat on her skin as she does so, and Rose bites her lip to suppress a moan.

On her best days, Rose _is_ a little too in love with herself; on her worst, she is in love with all the wrong things, in love with with finding something real beneath this oppressive floral costume, in love with the girl who touches her and leaves behind marks only Rose can see.

"Here," Luisa slips the sleeves off Rose's shoulders, "is to repeating our mistakes."

The rose-patterned dress drops to the floor, and Rose, snake having shed its skin, presses her bare body against Luisa's and kisses her until they both run out of air.


	13. whole

Here is why her brother and father never could understand her: they split her in half, saw her as either the gentle, steady drizzle of a doctor, or the reckless tornado hellbent on drinking her life away – but Luisa is neither of those women.

At her worst, she still loves with every piece of her soul; at her best, she still _hurts_ , still aches from a deep-seated pain woven into her very foundation.

Luisa is a hurricane with demons dancing at the edge of the storm and a hopeful heart at the eye, and Rose is the only person who has ever loved the whole of her.

So they can spurn her all they want, call her foolish and delusional for sprinting down her chosen path; she is beyond caring about what others say, because Rose, for all the blood on her hands, sees what the rest of the world is blind to:

Luisa Alver is not broken.


	14. pavement

The rain starts that afternoon and continues well into the evening, so when Luisa looks out the window at the deluge and says, "Let's go for a walk," Rose thinks she's kidding.

She is not – and in retrospect, coming from Luisa, the absurdity of the suggestion is what should have made it believable – and minutes later Rose somehow finds herself huddled under an umbrella, hair damp and curling, as Luisa skips ahead of her.

The pavement is slicked from the downpour, the green and gold and scarlet of the streetlights reflecting off the water, and Luisa sends ripples into the colors as she splashes through puddles, her face lit up with delight.

"Luisa, you're getting soaked," Rose admonishes, but her heart sings nonetheless; it's these moments, the ones where Luisa still manages to find all the little joys in life in spite of everything she's been through, that Rose risks to treasure.

Luisa's smile is brighter than the stars when she says, "So join me," and Rose, knowing she'll freeze for it later, lowers her umbrella, bounds forward into the rain, and allows herself the freedom to laugh.


	15. belong

Luisa is her own person – she knows this, or at the very least, she has spent years running through hell and breaking out of chains and trying, trying to believe it.

But she still yearns to belong.

To what or who, she isn’t certain; it isn’t the particulars that matter, it’s the belonging itself, the feeling that there is a space in this world for her, that she isn’t just wasting air every time she breathes.

She definitely does not belong in Rose Solano’s arms – although she fits far too well inside them – and she never will, not as long as Rose continues to walk away and leave her cold.

Yet she falls into them anyway, because the warmth, for all its brevity, is the closest Luisa has ever come to finding home.


	16. stay

Contrary to what one might expect, Rose falls asleep in Luisa's arms more often than Luisa does in hers.

When Luisa is especially hurting – when she feels lost and scared and so, so alone – Rose holds her, and they'll stay like that for hours upon hours, Luisa safe and curled against her.

But Luisa is a woman who constantly feels as though she's without control over her own life, and so many nights are Rose, encircled in Luisa's embrace, resting her head against Luisa's heart and relinquishing power to the only person she will ever freely give it to.

And the mornings that follow these nights will be the death of her, because these mornings are the ones where, before leaving, she has to untangle herself from Luisa's arms – and nothing, nothing has ever been harder.

These mornings are the mornings she can almost bring herself to stay.


	17. stain

When Luisa wakes up that morning – to an empty bed, to her own empty arms – she lets out a breath and rolls onto her side and finds that the pillow beside her is stained with Rose's lipstick.

If it weren't for these details, it might even be possible for Luisa to believe her nights with Rose to be a dream; but no, Rose always manages to leave behind some minuscule shred of evidence that it was real, she's real, these nights they get lost in each other are real.

Sometimes it's a lipstick stain; sometimes it's an earring; sometimes, in spite of the rules, it's the tiniest of bite marks.

But the real evidence is found in the fingerprints that cover her, all of them invisible and burning, all of them stained so deeply beneath her skin that there is no chance of scrubbing them away.

Luisa traces a finger along her inner thigh and gets up to wash the pillowcase.


	18. storm

It is frustratingly appropriate that a hurricane would hit Miami the day she visits Luisa in the mental institution.

To be clear, remorse is not an emotion Rose Solano is accustomed to; the world has dealt her too many blows for her to regret the blows she has dealt back in turn, so forgive her if these bloodied hands don't keep her awake at night.

However, when she takes that first step inside, self-loathing slams her so fast and hard that it makes her nauseous, nearly throws her off her feet, and shutting the door behind her does nothing to hold the storm outside.

This – this is the most unforgiveable trigger she's ever pulled, and what's more, the girl on the other end of the barrel did not deserve the bullet; Luisa's only crime was in having a heart, and it had landed her square in the crossfire.

When she finds the room she's looking for, she locks eyes with Luisa's haunted gaze; lightning crashes, cracks her right open, and Rose, forgetting to lie, says, "I'm sorry."


	19. grief

Grief is peculiar.

There is no linear progression to it; it comes in waves, some five minutes apart, others five years, and while Luisa has learned how to keep her head above water, her limbs still ache from the constant swimming.

Some days, the pain of her mother's death is a fresh wound, as though Luisa is still six and scared and lost at sea; some days, the pain of her father's death is an inch-long scar that does not sting, for she began to mourn him long before she ever buried his body.

And it is peculiar, too, how you can grieve for those who still live – for a woman who swept into your life, stole your heart, gave you hers, set you both aflame and left you to sift through the ashes.

It's peculiar how you can grieve a love that killed you.


	20. blood

Luisa likes to bite.

Rose learns this early on; Luisa pulls no punches in the name of sensuality, and in the heydays of their affair, it almost seems like the marks Luisa leaves are a means of claiming her territory, a way to pretend she possesses that which she knows will never be hers.

She grazes her teeth across Rose's skin as often as she kisses it, waits to bite down at just the precise moment that will take her by surprise, sends a jolt of pain through her that Rose rides for all its worth.

But once – once, she bites her as they're kissing, shards of glass digging into Rose's bottom lip, and it's so desperate a plea that it draws blood, taints both of their mouths with the sharp tang of iron.

Rose touches that bleeding lip after they pull away, and her fingers come away with scarlet proof that she is not as dead as she'd hoped.


	21. forward

In the early stages of her recovery, Luisa dreamed of time travel.

Her initial belief – or hope, at the very least – was that achieving sobriety would be the equivalent of catapulting herself into the past, the days before she’d spun out of control, and she’d rapidly learned such a feat was closer to impossible than it was implausible.

There was no reclaiming the lost time, so she turned her focus on putting one foot in front of the other, on living her life in forward motion.

But the inability to run backwards is not the inability to stand still, and once she makes this discovery, she finds a new addiction in grinding time beneath her reckless heel and throwing the concept of progress to the wind.

Perhaps she cannot turn back the clock – but when she lets herself fall into bed with Rose Solano, the world freezes on its axis, and Luisa loses all momentum.


	22. shoulder

For two people so impossibly wrong for each other, their edges align like puzzle pieces.

Luisa is a tiny tornado, a tempest that fits in your hands, and Rose is just tall enough that Luisa’s head fits right on her shoulder, curves clicking against curves, hands and hearts falling into place.

Their bodies mould together as though tied by a red thread, and they would look the image of soulmates if not for the fact that their love was doomed before it had even been born.

They fit against each other so well that Rose catches herself wondering if maybe, just maybe, there’s a universe out there less cruel than this one – wonders if they’ve met in other lifetimes, if they will continue to meet in others still, if there are worlds where they never have to untangle.

And if so, then it’s a suitable punishment for a monster such as herself that she’d fall into the one world that wasn’t built for a happy ending.


	23. tune

“I have to go.”

Rose’s voice is silk and feathers, and Luisa pulls it around herself, wraps her shivering body in the fleeting tune before she can forget the sound.

Rose shows no sign of moving; Luisa is curled against her back, arms wrapped around her, and she can’t see Rose’s expression, can’t see anything except a cascade of red hair and another morning of mistakes she isn’t smart enough to regret.

“I have to go,” Rose repeats, though she lays her hands over Luisa’s and squeezes, gently, briefly, just enough to give gravity to her presence.

“I know,” Luisa says, and she buries her face in Rose’s hair and holds her closer.


	24. identity

Rose could say that she’s lived many lives, but it wouldn’t be the truth; she has spent years killing every last miserable inch of herself, and none of the women she’s been before have ever been more than flesh and bone and a heart that does not beat.

This body is nothing but a hollow shell, utterly detached from the broken soul present only in the shattered glass of her eyes – it’s why she can’t bring herself to look in the mirror.

Identity is a luxury that Rose has never held; she exists in fragments, and even she doesn’t know what’s real from what isn’t, doesn’t know which pieces of this life are _her_ , doesn’t know why, all of a sudden, it matters.

All she knows is that Luisa is in love with a woman whom Rose has never met, and Rose wants to hunt that woman down, strangle her until she’s she’s breathless, bury her six feet under, eradicate her from every plane of reality.

But not nearly as much as she should.


	25. winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And here we’ve reached the end of this endeavor! I’m so glad I challenged myself to this. Last week was rough, which is why I ended up dropping to 25 from the intended 31, and I certainly like some of these ficlets more than others – but even with all that, I’m proud of what I’ve managed to accomplish here, and I hope you’ve all enjoyed reading along. <3

Miami winters are warmer than most; they’re so warm, in fact, that the city is at its most crowded in January, overflowing with people escaping to Florida’s year-round sunshine.

So there’s no reason for Luisa to be standing as close to Rose as she is, hand clinging to hers, seeking solace from a chill that isn’t anywhere except in the uncertain ice of her veins.

“You’re shivering,” Rose murmurs; she wraps her arm around Luisa’s shoulder, and there is nothing stepmother and stepdaughter in this intimacy, or in the concern lacing Rose’s voice when she asks, “Are you cold?”

“I don’t know,” Luisa says, willing herself to twist away from Rose’s arm and leaning closer into it instead; her words, raw from the strain of her voice, come out a plea, and it sounds far, far too much like  _do you love me?_

Rose, casting her eyes away and leaning against her, doesn’t say anything else, but Luisa hears it clearly through the agonizing heaviness of her silence:  _yes_.


End file.
